Exposing the role that Islamic jihad theology and ideology play in the modern global conflicts

Not only the Islamic State, but also Saudi Arabia, a kingdom that loudly proclaims its absolute fidelity to the Qur’an and Islamic law, regularly performs beheadings. Why so many misunderstanders of Islam? In this piece in Aleteia, Fr. Dwight Longenecker claims that it all comes from a misinterpretation of Qur’an 8:12: “Remember when your Lord inspired to the angels, “I am with you, so strengthen those who have believed. I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieved, so strike upon the necks and strike from them every fingertip.”

There are just two problems with this: the Qur’an and Islamic law. Fr. Longenecker does not mention, and probably doesn’t know, what is actually the primary Qur’an verse that Islamic jihadists and supremacists use to justify beheading: “When you meet the unbelievers, strike the necks…” — Qur’an 47:4

The literal understanding of this verse is paramount among Islamic commentators. The Tafsir al-Jalalayn says: “in other words, slay them — reference is made to the ‘striking of the necks’ because the predominant cause of being slayed is to be struck in the neck.” Zamakhshari takes “strike at the necks” to mean that Muslims should strike non-Muslims specifically on the neck rather than elsewhere, so as to make sure they are dead and not just wounded.

Nor does Fr. Longenecker mention, and probably doesn’t know, that the practice of beheading is also sanctioned by the example of Muhammad himself, the supreme example for Muslim behavior (cf. Qur’an 33:21):

“Then they [the Jewish Qurayzah tribe] surrendered, and the apostle [Muhammad] confined them in Medina in the quarter of d. al-Harith, a woman of B. Al-Najjar. Then the apostle went out to the market of Medina (which is still its market today) and dug trenches in it. Then he sent for them and struck off their heads in those trenches as they were brought out to him in batches. Among them was the enemy of Allah Huyayy b. Akhtab and Ka’b b. Asad their chief. There were 600 or 700 in all, though some put the figure as high as 800 or 900.” — Ibn Ishaq 690

Muslim and non-Muslim authorities and spokesmen the world over are rushing to reassure appalled non-Muslims that the Islamic State doesn’t represent Islam and that its actions are un-Islamic. However, when they do so, as in this piece, by failing to discuss key information, they are outstandingly irresponsible, and are lulling non-Muslims into a false sense of complacency. For this extraordinarily misleading peace, Fr. Dwight Longenecker and Aleteia owe their readers a retraction and apology. “There you go again, Spencer, being harsh and prickly,” you’ll say. And I’ll respond: No. The hour is far too late to be spreading this kind of misinformation, however well-intentioned. I know that the vast majority of people in the Catholic Church and the world at large really, really want what Fr. Longenecker writes here to be true, and that the point of view I represent is reviled and despised in both, but that doesn’t make what he says any more true, or what I say any less so.

The beheading of Steven Sotloff and James Foley are not isolated incidents. From northern Iraq and Syria come gruesome videos of piles of severed heads, heads stuck on fence spikes, teenagers beheading prisoners and even children laughing and carrying severed heads in the streets.

In this article I asked “Why Do Muslims Behead People?” Douglas Murray, writing in the Spectator here argues that beheading is commanded in the Quran. He quotes Quran 8:12 which says, “When your Lord revealed to the angels: I am with you, therefore make firm those who believe. I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them.”

It certainly sounds like the Quran expects unbelievers to be beheaded and it reads as if this violence is a divine command intended to inspire terror. Wanting to understand Islam a bit better and give Muslims the benefit of the doubt I searched online for an Islamic explanation.

After all, the Christian scriptures could be mined for some rather violent commands from God. There is the commandment in I Samuel 15:3 where God commands King Saul to slay the Amelekites: “Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.” For that matter, the words of Jesus could be taken out of context. He says, “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.”

Has the damning verse from the Quran been taken out of context? The explanation from Muslim apologists is that the background for this command is within an actual battle situation. The Battle of Badr in the year 624 is the time and place where Muslim warriors were called to defend their people. Muslim apologists argue that it is just as unfair to generalize from this verse and say that the religion of Islam condones beheading as it is for critics of Christianity to say that I Samuel 15:3 commands genocide, and that Christianity is intrinsically a barbaric and violent religion.

It seems a fair argument. The damning verse from the Quran, just like the damning verse from the Old Testament, was set in a particular historical context in which the warriors claimed divine revelation for their acts of genocide or violence.

The problem however, is that there are no Christians today who are wiping out whole villages at the edge of the sword. There are Muslims however, who are doing so in the name of their religion. In Nigeria, Boko Haram are doing just that as this report from Reuters reveals. The same is happening in Syria and Northern Iraq as ISIS claims territory—evacuating villages, slaughtering their inhabitants, selling the women into slavery and burning churches. Jesus may have said, “I have not come to bring peace but a sword.” But everyone understands that he did not mean it literally.

However, the prophet in Quran 8:12 did mean for his soldiers to use the sword literally and without mercy, and the Islamic warriors of ISIS behead those they consider infidels out of direct obedience to Quran 8:12.

No doubt moderate Muslims are as dismayed by such fanaticism as a Christian would be to hear of genocide committed in obedience to I Samuel 15:3. Nevertheless, obedience to the Quran is the reason given by the terrorists, and the terror instilled in others by beheading—which is given as the reason for barbaric acts seems to be working.

The answer therefore is that Quran 8:12 does not command beheading, but fanatical Muslims are using the words from their Scriptures to justify unspeakable violence and terror. Instead they should listen to their own moderate and wise teachers. Many Muslim leaders have spoken out against the barbarians of ISIS. The fanatics should stop and learn from their own teachers and from their own Quran where it is written, “Indeed, Allah enjoins justice, and the doing of good to others; and giving like kindred; and forbids indecency, and manifest evil, and wrongful transgression.” (Quran 16:91)

How easily the counter jihad talks about throwing in the towel and labeling the Roman Catholic Church as all beyond hope when it could be a barrier in the storm and one of the best allies. Not all of the Roman Catholic Church is locked into Modern Multiculturalism as is shown by a few simple internet searches. Yes, Muslims wish to silence and suppress Catholic resistance voices because they have such potential influence over a large body of Christians. Let’s not assist the enemy and do his dirty work for him let us foster an environment where all Christians work to reveal the beast of Islam. We all saw what the vulture MSM did with Franklin Graham to control the message because too many were divided.

Rinzai
By the tone of your comment it sounds as if you wish that the Roman Catholic Church were dead,
Also show some respect and capitalize. It is not as if you are referring to Muhammad’s Islam which is dead inside and out rotted down to its filthy sordid core with the most vile blasphemy against God that the world has ever seen.

You’re wrong. The Church has always been filled with imperfect men (even in the papacy at times), but it is protected by the Holy Spirit and will never die.
It will live on long after every organization you belong to has died.

You all are funny.
I hope ISIS dont come to your famili!
I pray God have mercy on you on other end of your life.
take God out of your life, destruction come.
God of Abraham is watching all of you—>>>>porn, money, murder lover.
🙂
Peace

With a name like Longenecker, he ought to be worried about beheadings!

But seriously, he’s just another dolt who knows or cares not the havoc he plays in this conflict, by continuously giving Muslims a pass, never being critical, treating them like deprived children with emotional issues. Bush’s ignorant meme “Islam means peace” repeated over and over has cost trillions of dollars and untold lives in extending this conflict far longer than if a clear-thinking Winston Churchill were in the lead.

I don’t have much of a problem with analysts & pundits using the term “the prophet” in this context, as long, of course, as we know he’s not being “respectful” in doing so — for, with all the millions of Mohammeds out there, we sometimes want to make sure our readers know we aren’t referring to Mohammed the taxi driver or local butcher or 7-11 clerk (or, alas, barrister or police chief or nuclear power plant manager…).

You are right, Max. Bush caused a lot of damage with that “Islam is peace” BS the week of 9/11. It’s taken precious years for people to realize that Bush didn’t know what he was talking about. And the Muslims have continued their mass-murdering while many are still stuck on the “peace” idiocy.

Just using common sense, how could anyone say something’s peaceful when it just slaughtered 3,000 people?

IMO Bush and his “Islam is peace” is the biggest blunder in presidential history.

“You won’t find the fabled land of moderate Muslims in the east. You won’t even find it in the west. Like all myths it exists in the imagination of those who tell the stories. You won’t find a moderate Islam in the Koran, but you will find it in countless Western books about Islam.”

That said, maybe the calls for fighting against the unbelievers, and smirking their necks, we’re intended to be a historical account only. Maybe not.

That answer is irrelevant however, in that mainstream, normative Islam teaches this as an eternal, divine obligation for Muslims, and given Islam’s bloody history, including current historical events, it seems that a plethora of Muslims still teach and observe this mandate as eternal, similarly as they deem the Qur’an as divine, immutable and the direct revelations of Allah.

The towers – the *mountains* of skulls that are littered all along the “broad trail of blood” (I quote this memorable line from the 19th century British Prime Minister, Gladstone; he was denouncing, in particular, the Muslim mass murders of Bulgarian dhimmi Christians) left by the Ummah across 1400 years of human history cry out that this man does not know what he is talking about.

He also obviously doesn’t know that for Muslims the Sunnah – the example of Mohammed – is what counts. Not just the Quran. The Hadiths and the Sira of Ibn Ishaq, the canonical “life” of Mohammed.

And in the Life of Mohammed there are accounts of mass beheadings which were commanded and approved of by Mohammed.

Anything Mohammed the Mad did or approved of is eternally valid for mohammedans.

Seriously, perhaps a jihadwatcher or two or three might like to look up a couple of the accounts of Mohammed-approved-and-commanded beheadings in the Sira of Ibn Ishaq, as translated by A Guillaume (or in the Muir translation), copy out the relevant passages, and send to Fr Longnecker, with a covering note: “This is the Sunnah – the ideally-to-be-imitated example – of Mohammed”.

Biblical interpretation as practiced both in the Catholic Church and the mainline Protestante Churches uses the historical critical method of interpretation to understand the Bible and it sheds light on those occasions in the Old Testament or Hebrew Scriptures when God is said to have ordered somone like king Saul to massacre people. The Bible reflect common practices, in the case mentioned of King Saul and the Amalekites, of 1000 BC. when wars were undertaken. There is a gradual evolution in biblical revelation so that God is seen to “condescend” and educate his people little by little. Besides, the Christian understanding of the Old Testament is centered on Jesus Christ so that it is all interpreted in relation to his eventual coming. The laws referring to circumcision, ritual cleanliness and so forth were simply dropped by Christianity, which has no dietary laws, these having been superceded as expressed in the New Testament. There is no comparison with this kind of interpretation and what happens in the case of the Qu´ran. Anyone who tries to apply the historical-critical method to the Qurán will surely have his head chopped off.
Surprising that this priest hasn’t studied this in the seminary,or maybe he has forgotten it.

Islam and Christianity both believe earlier scriptures are abrogated by newer scriptures. In Christianity, that means revelation brought folks along from/out of a violent context, and culminates in Christ. For Islam however, their early scriptures are “get along and be nice” and the later “full relevation” is kill’em all, rape and plunder. And Mohamed is their “ideal man” who can always be copied in his behaviour — who by the way believed he was being talked to by a demon who choked him, until his wife Khadijah convinced him to go along with it – resulting in the koran.

“Muslim …..authorities and spokesmen the world over are rushing to reassure appalled non-Muslims that the Islamic State doesn’t represent Islam and that its actions are un-Islamic.”

**

Yes, they’re eager to assure non-Muslims. As far as convincing their fellow Muslims, wellll……….that’s not such a big priority.

From the outside this seems like hypocrisy, but it makes perfect sense when you understand that the highest value in Islam is the promulgation of Islam. So when a Muslim’s highest priority is to defend Islam, it’s MUCH, MUCH more important for them to convince the non-Muslims that Islam is wonderful—-they don’t need to waste their time arguing with other Muslims, because if they’re Muslim they’ve already submitted. The fact that other Muslims might be committing atrocities is neither good nor bad in itself—it’s only good or bad depending on whether their actions are helping or hurting Islam.

The clergy, high and low and treated in the aggregate, of the Roman Catholic Church are presently failing their flock where truth about Islam is concerned. And, by default, they’re failing all of Western Civilization too.

Quite sad. And quite unnecessary. I might add that the fish rots from the head. The head right now for the RC Church goes by the name of “Francis.”

People like Longneck really amaze me! What are they about? Do they think that by covering for Islam they gain some protection? It seems that Foley and Sotloff thought similar and learned the truth the hard way. When it was too late!
Or do they think they will change Muslims by telling them what “true” Islam is? In that case they are sadly mistaken. Muslims don’t take advice on Islam from Kuffar.
I hope Longneck doesn’t learn the hard way but I would like him to know that his pretended knowledge of Islam is only helping the knife-wielding Jihadists.

I can only think that they are trying to encourage Muslims to reject violence by saying that Islam is really peaceful. (To give him the benefit of the doubt, as he would say). A bit like teaching by example. Or keep repeating a lie and eventually everyone will believe you. Everyone except Muslims. Which is the situation we have at the moment.
That won’t work of course. It’s just wishful thinking and it doesn’t help.

What is all this emphasis on beheading? Who CARES what the execution method is, the pertinent issue is the EXECUTIONS mandated in the Qur’an. ( frankly I’m more concerned about the “fingertips” in 8:12 )

It’s idiotic. Even if people like Longnecker are successful in arguing that beheadings are un-Islamic, that still does not address the command to kill, supposedly in some “Islamic” way.

“No doubt moderate Muslims are as dismayed by such fanaticism as a Christian would be to hear of genocide committed in obedience to I Samuel 15:3”

How on Earth would a Christian murder “in obedience” to Sam 15:3? I suppose anyone named King Saul might who happens upon a town full of Amelekites, might feel compelled to wipe them out, but the chances of that happening seem LESS likely than some “believers” meeting some unbelievers and deciding the conditions laid out in 8:12, 47:4, and 66:9 are very neatly met.

”What is all this emphasis on beheading? Who CARES what the execution method is, the pertinent issue is the EXECUTIONS mandated in the Qur’an”

Excellent point, Cornholio.

If these fiends were murdering their victims by shooting them in the head, or hanging them, I wonder what this Longenecker would say then ? Does he have anything to say about good old suicide bombing murders ? Would he be searching frantically in the koran for some verse to suggest murdering infidels, and the insufficiently Islamic, was merely historical, and therefore misinterpreted ? Probably …

How to get people to read and understand the Koran and the way Mohammed promoted Islam? It seems like it’s a Pandora’s box. Most people have a suspicion of what’s inside this box but are afraid to open it up to reveal the shocking contents.

@TH–I’m for the historical-grammatical method of exegesis rather than the historical critical. I see no reason why the churches of Jesus the Messiah show bow to the shade of Georg Hegel (his follower Ferdinand Christian Baur was the one who launched the secular superstition that the Four Gospels are all very late), or accept what Solomon Schechter called “the Higher Anti-Semitism”.

@all:

Oh, my. Once again, some well-meaning Dhimmi sticks his foot in his mouth.

Not only are the ISIS savages brutes, but they are stupid. Why kill journalists, who as a class are probably more sympathetic to Islam and Muslims than anyone outside of the usual moonbat academics? If any good comes of this, then perhaps some journalists will have a little attitude readjustment as they ponder while nervously massaging their necks.

And the Islamic State and Saudi Arabia are not the only “misunderstanders”—Nick Berg was beheaded in Iraq, and Daniel Pearl was beheaded in Pakistan.

And this goes back further: In 1996, Russian soldier Yevgeny Rodionov was filmed as he was beheaded by his captors after refusing to convert to Islam in Chechnya.

Nor is this just happening in Dar-al-Islam—Muslims beheaded off-duty British soldier Lee Rigby in a London street.

More:

The fanatics should stop and learn from their own teachers and from their own Quran where it is written, “Indeed, Allah enjoins justice, and the doing of good to others; and giving like kindred; and forbids indecency, and manifest evil, and wrongful transgression.” (Quran 16:91)
………………………

Is anyone else tired of clueless Infidels trying to lecture Muslims about what is “really” in their texts? It’s just ludicrous…

In fact, the translation of the above Sura is somewhat different from what the good father imagines. Qur’an.com offers this:

“And fulfill the covenant of Allah when you have taken it, [O believers], and do not break oaths after their confirmation while you have made Allah , over you, a witness. Indeed, Allah knows what you do.”

This sounds, in fact, less like an admonition for Muslims to be good to others, and more a condemnation of those who are “insufficiently Islamic”.

And Qur’an 16:95 seems to confirm that:

“And do not exchange the covenant of Allah for a small price. Indeed, what is with Allah is best for you, if only you could know.”

It is, instead, threatening potential apostates.

And—I realize this is low humor—but is the author of this idiocy about how beheading isn’t truly Islamic *really* named “Longenecker”? Insert tasteless joke here…

Is anyone else tired of clueless Infidels trying to lecture Muslims about what is “really” in their texts? It’s just ludicrous…

Haha yep…It all boils down to who do you believe, infidel dolts and dullards or people who have actually studied the subject like Spencer. Most JW posters have already made that choice. Mahoundians would naturally reject the whole idea of kuffar defining Islam for them. Personally, I have read the literature, listened to what Mahoundians say, and watch what they do. Unfortunately I can’t give any positive reports. But then, I’m only a swami, not a priest…

The Huyayy b. Akhtab beheaded by Muhammad was the father of Safiyya, who Muhammad later married after beheading her husband. He also beheaded her brother. Can you imagine marrying (at age 17) the 60 year old man who beheaded your father, brother, and husband? And Muslims believe she wanted and dreamed of marrying Muhammad.

Fr.(?) Longenecker does NOT speak for Catholics. Actual, devout Catholics are embarrassed by his ramblings. He spent most of his life in the Anglican Church and hasn’t quite been able to make the jump to real Catholic belief. He only knows the post-Vatican II beliefs of the Church, which are basically modernist errors. Fr. Longenecker embraces the warm and fuzzy, let’s all just get along view of Christianity. He has had so many Catholics pointing out his questionable ideas (his specialty is the straw man), he has recently closed him comment box feature. Now he can spew whatever trite misinformation he wants and never be challenged.
Please do NOT click on any links to his website. He takes an increase in his site visit numbers as proof that he is doing well. I believe one commenter pointed out that Pewsitter (the Catholic equivalent of Drudge) must link to his articles for comic relief. Except the fact that he is leading his flock astray (as is Dolan) is anything but funny.

I think you might be exaggerating the immunity to the PC MC neurosis/virus among Catholics. I’ve seen no evidence that such an immunity exists on any significant scale beyond a tiny minority whose minuscule proportion therefore, ipso facto, indicates the immunity has little to do with Catholicism per se.

And I’m not picking on the Catholics; what I said about them applies to every other group in the entire West, left right center elites ordinary political religious business journalistic artistic — you name it.

The point of the good priests comments are not lost on the educated. ISIS is a US and British collaboration to drum up support for war mongering Western oligarchs to justify war in Syria. Its like watching a bad DC comic strip (pun intended).

When God ordered King Saul to kill all the men, women, children, etc. that is pretexted on a prior time when God was the King of Israel, and God Himself made the judgment of life and death. But the Jews in the time of Samuel the Prophet clamored to be like the pagan nations and have a man be kind, instead of God be the King of Israel. God gave into the Jews to let them have a king, and then later, Saul being king, was presented with the fact that a King of Israel, being in truth God, would have to ultimately judge the living and the dead. Now the real meaning of the story where God tells Saul what he must do as the King of Israel, is meant to repent the Israelites from ever having complained to God , and demanded an ordinary man be made the King of Israel. For in the test of truth , God was saying to Saul “See, if you want to really play God, you might have to destroy the entire world” But the lesson is not yet learned in the story of Saul. Saul actually did not carry out the command to kill all the people, he spared many. And that then proved that no ordinary mere mortal man can ever be the King of Israel, a title that belongs to YAHWEH GOD , the MESSIAH. And hence, when God came among us as Jesus, God presented a Peace , that instead of God destroying all humanity , that the people take a look at Jesus, the Son of God and repent themselves from wanting tyrannical kings of the Earth , who ruled with swords to kill all humanity to create empires. But the entire lesson is jaded by the conspiracy of those who wish the New World Order and the Empire to be along the same or similar ideological roots of either Islam or Marxism or tyranny in general. They rejected the Son of God who forgave, rather than kill, and they played into the Judgment of God that God, if God is KING, the King of Israel , that God shown to Saul, that God as King may indeed destroy the whole world of civilization and start over, caring not for the child either. But if the world accepted that God gave the Jews one in the image of the man, who was also in the image of the God of Israel, then He as Jesus , would rule by Peace, Healing the Nations by TEACHING LOVE, but that is not what World Governance is about, it is about KINGS of the Earth , having lavish Wealth of Gold and Silver, while the rest of humanity are Slaves. So Islam is a religion demanding the common people be as slaves to allah, and that means a group of men can be as gods upon the earth while the common man is a mere slave. To take away the God, leaves any Ideology like Marxism as the same conclusion, A World governed by an Elite, and the rest of people mere slaves.

Christianity and Judaism are terrible! Look at the horrifying things the Bible says!

And Samuel said to Saul, “The Lord sent me to anoint you king over his people Israel; now therefore listen to the words of the Lord. Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘I have noted what Amalek did to Israel in opposing them on the way when they came up out of Egypt. Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’” (1 Sam 15:1‑3)

Just a hint, if you get your information about ANY subject from a polemicist, rather than an actual…you know…academic source, then you don’t know what you are talking about when you speak about that subject…at all. Robert Spencer is a polemic hack interested in peddling a phobia, rather than informing his readers on a subject, and the VERY scary sounding “Jihad Watch” is frankly, a joke.

My suggestion is to go out, and buy a book on the history of the Islamic world, it’s emergence, growth, decline, and political radicalization. Meke sure that the book was a) written by an academic – someone whose work is subject to review by informed peers, and whose income is deoendent upon accuracy, rather than “clicks”, and b) that it is NOT, and has never been on the best seller list, and that nine of the endorsements on the back cover a from politicians, or journalists – academics only! Next…read it. Then, go find another one, preferably one that looks at the same subject from a different perspective, but otherwise meets all of the criteria of the firts book. After that comes the scary/hard part…identify about the areas of agreement between the two, as well as where they conflict, and THINK about why they might disagree, and which argument is more persuasive.

Then, and only them will you actually be informed on the subject, otherwise, you are only propagandized.

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